Rob: If you're not up for dinner out, we can do takeout. What's your preference?
Ben: Your choice, babe.
Rob: I'm down for anything you want.
* * *
In the spirit of full transparency and a strong desire to avoid jealous man tantrums, I started a group message with Rob and Ben.
* * *
Magnolia: Hey guys. I'm going to the game at Fenway with my brothers tonight. Some other time. Okay?
Ben: Enjoy it. Talk soon.
* * *
Of course, he responded first. Such a competitive little shit.
* * *
Rob: If it goes into extra innings and you want to crash in the city, you're always welcome at my place.
Ben: FLAG ON THE PLAY
Ben: PASS INTERFERENCE
Ben: Get your ass back to the line of scrimmage, boy.
Rob: Settle down. The pass is good. No interference.
Magnolia: You guys. For real. Chill.
Rob: As I'm sure you can see, I'm completely chill.
Ben: You wouldn't know chill if you were literally frozen.
Magnolia: If you two weren't amusing, you'd be annoying as fuck.
* * *
I slipped my phone into my bag as a smile pulled at my lips. Andy was right. I was hooked on these two.
Chapter Eighteen
Ben: I'm going to mow your lawn.
Magnolia: Is that some kind of innuendo?
Ben: No. I'm mowing your lawn.
Magnolia: With…a lawn mower?
Ben: Yeah.
Magnolia: I'm sorry but do you know how to operate a lawn mower?
Ben: Of fucking course.
Magnolia: I want to believe that so much.
Ben: It's going to be awesome. Just you wait.
Magnolia: Or maybe you find a different project?
Ben: It's no sweat.
Magnolia: Mmhmm. Okay. But it's not actually a lawn so it doesn't require mowing.
Ben: What the fuck is it?
Magnolia: Evergreen moss with patches of low-growing turf grass.
Ben: Why?
Magnolia: There are several reasons.
Ben: Such as…?
Magnolia: Lawns waste upwards of 3 trillion gallons of water each year plus hundreds of millions of gallons of gas for mowing and pesticides. Those pesticides then destroy aquatic ecosystems with toxic rainwater runoff.
Magnolia: Lawns also drive out pollinators and native animal and plant species.
Ben: Okay. I won't mow your moss.
Magnolia: Thank you.
Magnolia: And thank you for offering.
Ben: Let's not give me too much credit.
Rob: Sox game tonight. At Fenway.
Magnolia: Yes, sir.
Rob: Got a date?
Magnolia: lol, always…because I share a set of season tickets with my brothers.
Rob: Ah. All right. Enjoy.
Rob: …but if you want to stay overnight in the city, hit me up.
Magnolia: Do you have room for Linden too? He's about your height but probably has 30-40 pounds on you.
Rob: I will get Linden a very comfortable suite at the Taj.
Magnolia: I think we're good but I'll keep you posted.
Ben: I brought your recycling bins in from the curb.
Ben: After they were emptied.
Magnolia: Thank you—and good clarification.
Ben: It's the least I can do without fucking up your moss.
Magnolia: I appreciate it.
Ben: Your dog, though. He didn't like me hanging around your yard.
Magnolia: For what it's worth, he barks at my brothers that way too when they visit. Anyone outside the house is the enemy.
Ben: Smart boy.
Ben: Explain to me again why we can't work on one room at a time.
Magnolia: Because you ripped the walls and floors and windows out and we have to fix those things first.
Magnolia: You can't spend your time on finding cool shower fixtures until you have walls. You need walls.
Ben: You're saying I should stop buying stuff.
Magnolia: Among other things, yes.
Ben: Can you tell me what else you're saying because I don't know how to read between the home renovation lines.
Magnolia: You need to figure out what you're doing with this place. Once you determine whether you're renovating the entire place to sell or renovating it for you to live in or selling it as-is right now, other questions will answer themselves.
Ben: I'm not ready to sell it. I don't know. I just can't be finished with it yet.
Magnolia: I get that.
Ben: No. It doesn't make sense.
Ben: But I should sell it. I don't want a house in Beverly, of all places.
Magnolia: HEY
Ben: Sorry.
Ben: But I don't want a house. I don't want the responsibility.
Magnolia: And you don't want to sell it.
Ben: Not yet.
Magnolia: In that case, you shouldn't buy any more shower fixtures.
Magnolia: Any fixtures. At all.
Ben: I just don't know when I'll snap out of this. I need to get on with my life.
Magnolia: I think you have to take it as it comes and do your best. It's not the sort of thing you can rush.
Ben: I'm trying.
Magnolia: I know, sweetie.
Magnolia: Do you want to talk about it? You can tell me about your grandmother.
Ben: No.
Magnolia: Okay.
Rob: Here's how fucked up my day has been.
Rob: I had a call at midnight with Osaka and then a 4 a.m. call with Brussels and sometimes I hate that I'm good at my job because my job is exhausting.
Magnolia: That is more fucked up than my day.
Rob: What's going on with you?
Magnolia: Nothing important. Just issues with subcontractors and materials and timelines and budgets and also weather.
Rob: Yeah, so, nothing much.
Magnolia: Nope.
Rob: Have you eaten lunch?
Magnolia: Lunch? What is this lunch you speak of?
Rob: Where are you?
Magnolia: Back Bay. Why?
Rob: I'm sending lunch over to you.
Magnolia: You don't have to do that.
Rob: I want to.
Rob: Mortadella and raspberry seltzer, right?
Magnolia: Only if you're having cookies with a side of smoked turkey.
Rob: Give me an address.
Magnolia: Are you delivering this lunch yourself?
Rob: That depends. Do you want to see me?
Magnolia: I wouldn't send you and your cookies away.
Rob: That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.
Magnolia: It's the first time you've offered to hand-carry lunch to me.
Rob: We can make a habit of this.
Magnolia: Let's see how this one goes before making any rituals.
Rob: Come on! You know how it will go. We'll eat cookies and I'll invite my cock into the conversation and your day will be better for it.
Rob: Also, I want to watch you boss people around.
Magnolia: Is that so?
Rob: Yeah. I need to add some texture and dimension to my fantasies.
Magnolia: Since it's for a good cause…the brownstone at the end of Fairfield between Beacon and Marlborough Streets.
Chapter Nineteen
My date was a renovation disaster.
I didn't know where to find the patience to keep up with Ben's missteps. When he fouled up the mitered angles on the molding I tasked him with cutting, I stopped to contemplate whether he was doing it on purpose. He had to be doing it on purpose. How else could someone fuck up on the regular like this?
But he wasn't doing it on purpose. I watched him as I measured and re-measured the dining room, one eye on the wall, the other on Ben. He was trying to get it right. He studied each board until I had to wonder if it was talking to him, pos
itioned the miter box then checked the angle I'd written on the back of the board, and then positioned the box again. By all accounts, he should've had it right.
He just didn't. He didn't have it at all.
When I saw him switch the saw on, I dropped my hold on the tape. It recoiled into the device as I crossed the room. "Wait, wait, wait," I shouted, waving my hands to capture his attention.
He glanced up at me through his safety goggles—one of my victories on this project—with a confused scowl. "I haven't even done anything," he said. "How is it already wrong?"
In the week since deciding I was going to do this wild thing and date both Rob and Ben at the same time—separately—Ben never failed to compete the hardest. He was the first one to text in the morning and the last at night. He was working for it. The gold star, the prize. The validation—the distraction—of winning.
Ben did all those things but Rob…Rob was subtle. He asked after my work, my dog, my family. He made small but significant gestures that proved he was paying attention. It was a strange form of courtship but I liked those things. I appreciated those things.
I knew it buttered Rob's buns that Ben got "extra" time with me because I was physically incapable of letting this house fall into shambles. For reasons I didn't understand but nonetheless appreciated, Ben didn't compete while we were working on the house. He wasn't angling for a gold star here, that much was certain. He was his regular brash, ballsy self when he pulled on the gloves and goggles. No jockeying, no sweet words for the sake of earning another point on the leaderboard.
It helped that I didn't see this as Ben-and-Magnolia time because I was squarely in Gigi territory while I worked. I wasn't a girl here, I was the job boss. I wasn't anyone's to woo.
"It's still wrong, buddy." I reached across him to turn off the saw's spinning wheel. "Trust me, it's possible."
Ben pushed the goggles to the crown of his head with a grunt. His hands found his hips and his body shifted into Very Annoyed, a pose in three parts.
One: hands on the hips. This often included his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but there were no sleeves today. Nope. No sleeves. Ben was wearing a tank that fit like a sunburn and it was bare, bronzed skin for days. I repeat: no sleeves.
Two: scowl face. It didn't stop at the tilt of his lips. This expression involved narrowed eyes, a pinched forehead, and a ticking jaw underneath a day or two of stubble. The scar running the length of his cheek seemed to deepen, darken with the scowl.
Three: wide stance. He stood there, his feet planted shoulder-width apart and his entire body tense as if he was daring a tornado to rock him from this spot. Today, this stance accentuated the narrow line of his waist and the way his jeans seemed to hang there like a parabola. The button sitting at the vertex forced my attention low, low.
It was funny that, in the Cartesian coordinate system, the focus sat above the vertex in a positively opened parabola. In the Ben Brock system of screwing up basic tasks while wearing fuckhot jeans, the vertex and the focus were almost the same thing. And that had me thinking about focal length. If the vertex and focus were the same thing in this weird world where I was dating two men—and remodeling a house with one of them—what was the focal length? Fair question, right? I already knew Rob's, ahem, length. I could at least calculate Ben's.
If this parabola's vertex was at the origin, and if it opened in the positive y direction, then it was only a matter of solving y = x2 / 4f.
Trigonometry. Always useful.
"You're staring at my crotch again," he said.
I waved him away but kept my gaze on his waist. Again. As if I did it often. "I'm solving for f."
"Yeah, me too."
He pulled his gloves off and tossed the goggles to the workbench. He advanced on me but I was only peripherally aware of it as that shiny vertex, the one stamped with the jeans' brand, moved closer. I lost sight of that point when he stepped into my space, his midnight eyes still Very Annoyed.
Ben's hands found my hips and he forced me backward until my ass hit the wall. "I have had," he started, his fingertips driving into my soft tissue like he was trying to snatch something from beneath the surface, "I've had enough, Magnolia."
I dragged my gaze up, over his neck, his chin, that scowl, that scar. And I met his eyes. He was still Very Annoyed but there was more. Something I needed time to catalog without him holding me, without his chest rising and falling as breath moved through him.
"As have I. Wasting good building materials is ridiculous," I said. "I'm firmly against filling up landfills because someone isn't following directions."
His eyes fluttered shut and he bowed his head a bit, as if the weight of my words was dragging him down. But then he edged up, his scruffy cheek passing over my jaw. "Do you know how much it costs me to fuck up in front of you? How much I fucking hate that I'm getting this wrong? That I'm surrounded by proof that I can't do anything right?" he whispered. His hold on my hips tightened. It didn't hurt. That was the benefit of having plenty of padding there. "I keep telling myself that I'll get it right and then—then I'll earn it."
"Earn what?"
"But I don't," he continued, ignoring my question. "I don't get it right. Do you have any idea how much I want to do this thing, even though it's too fucking late? How much I want to follow your orders and meet your expectations? And then how much I love it when you don't put up with my shit?"
"Oh, you enjoy that?" I pursed my lips in exaggerated annoyance. "I was unaware."
"There are so many things you don't know," Ben whispered, his scruff rasping over my cheek. "I'm not saying that like some kind of mansplainer asshole. My grandmother didn't raise me to be like that." He squeezed his eyes shut, blew out a breath. "But you don't know what it does to me when you come in here yelling orders with that little t-shirt and those jeans and the tool belt straight outta the 'Girls Who Hammer' edition of Playboy."
"The March '92 edition?" I quipped. "Or the August of 2011?"
He pressed his teeth to my jaw, growling. "Both."
"Mmhmm" was my only response. What was there to say? I'd already used my allotted sassy tokens for this conversation and I was notoriously bad when it came to handling deliciously hot, tense interactions like a normal human lady. Instead, I went for obscure humor (I mean, I'd been talking trig) and awkward comments or—even better!—straight-up silence.
Again, it was no surprise I was single.
"Magnolia?" he asked, pressing his body against mine. He felt glorious. The sweetest rock and hard place in the world.
I ran my hands up his back, settling on his shoulders. My fingers slipped under his shirt, introducing myself to his skin. "Yeah, Ben?"
"I'm going to kiss you," he said. "If that's not what you want, tell me now."
He kept one hand on my hip but released the other as he stroked my waist, my flank, my shoulder. When he reached my face, he dragged his knuckles down the line of my jaw before tucking stray hairs over my ear.
"Tell me now," he repeated.
I met his gaze, blinked. I didn't say no. I wasn't going to.
Ben kissed me like the sand was almost out of the hourglass and this moment was slipping away. Fierce, unrelenting, frantic. His tongue swept over mine in a command, an order levied just as sharp and exacting as any of mine. And I surrendered to him. I wanted it.
"I've needed this for so long," he murmured against my cheek. He pressed a kiss to the corner of my lips. It was sweet. Chaste, even. It was nothing like the heat pulsing between us but it was right. "Goddamn, it's been so long."
"Not that long," I replied. "We met a few weeks ago."
"Yeah and you came in here with your tits out, honey," he said, his hold on my hip shifting to my backside. "I almost followed you across the street that night."
"Almost, huh?"
"I stood there, staring out the door, wondering how a little thing like you could walk in and rock my entire world." Ben nodded, dragging his rough scruff against my skin. Up my neck, my jaw, beh
ind my ear. Right into tingle territory. "I watched from the front door. After you yelled at me for forty minutes."
"No more than five minutes."
"I watched you go home, turn off the lights. Thought about you getting into bed in that loose shirt. Jesus. Held on to the doorframe so hard I yanked the damn thing off."
"Is that what happened?"
"It is," he replied with a laugh. "I'm going to kiss you again. The molding will wait. We're doing this now. Okay? Answer me this time. I want the words."
"Okay," I said.
I didn't have to solve for f this morning. Not when the focal length was pressed right up against my belly.
Chapter Twenty
My date was going to town on a waffle cone.
When I noticed this, two thoughts crossed my mind.
First, demolishing a double scoop of gelato should be an Olympic sport, and second, that tongue had skills.
"Not liking the pistachio?" Rob asked when he took a breath.
His lips were shiny. It reminded me of…mmm. Like I needed that reminder. Every time I was with Rob, my body felt like a harp string pulled too tight.
Just waiting to be plucked.
I hadn't been plucked in ages. And I did mean ages. I barely remembered how a good plucking went but I knew shiny lips usually meant we were off to a good start.
I glanced down at the small dish in my hands. I hadn't touched it. I tended to do that when Rob was around. Forget about everything save for the quiver of anticipation conveniently located right between my legs, at least for a few minutes. "Oh, no. It's fine. I like pistachio. Love pistachio. It's great. Like, if I had to rank the nuts, I'd put pistachio right up—"
Rob swirled his tongue around the inner edge of the waffle cone while he stared at me, and yeah, yeah this was what it meant for panties to fall right off. For a chick with hips like mine, that was some kind of magic.
The Magnolia Chronicles Page 12